Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?

Washington Post ^ | 09/15/2012 | Fouad Ajami

[SeekAndFind]

Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.

Time and again in recent years, as the outside world has battered the walls of Muslim lands and as Muslims have left their places of birth in search of greater opportunities in the Western world, modernity — with its sometimes distasteful but ultimately benign criticism of Islam — has sparked fatal protests. To understand why violence keeps erupting and to seek to prevent it, we must discern what fuels this sense of grievance.

There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand.

In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored — poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.

[skinkinthegrass]

!

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

“When men speak of you they speak of scientists and poets!”

“BURN YOUR BOOKS! Make warriors of your poets! Have your scientists invent new poisons for our arrows!”-Bin Yusef from the opening scenes in EL CID.

[heartwood]

look up Asma bint Marwan

Then (occurred) the sariyyah of `Umayr ibn `Adi Ibn Kharashah al-Khatmi against `Asma’ Bint Marwan, of Banu Umayyah Ibn Zayd, when five nights had remained from the month of Ramadan, in the beginning of the nineteenth month from the hijrah of the apostle of Allah. `Asma’ was the wife of Yazid Ibn Zayd Ibn Hisn al-Khatmi. She used to revile Islam, offend the prophet and instigate the (people) against him. She composed verses. Umayr Ibn Adi came to her in the night and entered her house. Her children were sleeping around her. There was one whom she was suckling. He searched her with his hand because he was blind, and separated the child from her. He thrust his sword in her chest till it pierced up to her back. Then he offered the morning prayers with the prophet at al-Medina. The apostle of Allah said to him: “Have you slain the daughter of Marwan?” He said: “Yes. Is there something more for me to do?” He [Muhammad] said: “No two goats will butt together about her”. This was the word that was first heard from the apostle of Allah. The apostle of Allah called him `Umayr, “basir” (the seeing).[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/’Asma’_bint_Marwan

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Asma bint Marwan

According to the Wikipedia source you mentioned....

“The story of her death by command of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, after she opposed him with poetry and provoked other pagans to commit violence against him, can be found in the s’ra material collected by Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Sa’d”

BUT HERE’s THE KICKER:

“Some classical and post-classical hadith scholars such as Al-Albani, Majdi, and Al-Jawzi have rejected the story, with some declaring it as fabrication, pointing out in their arguments that the chains of transmission by which the story was transmitted are all weak.”

It’s going to be very hard to argue that Muhammad did this deed when Muslims can always respond that this story is NOT considered sacred text and is considered a fabrication by enemies of Muhammad to make him look like a monster (BTW, I’ve heard Muslims make this claim to defend Muhammad before ).